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 the effect her stories might have on Margaret's sensitiveness. She had no sleep at all. Sleepless and shaken she lay awake the whole night, conjuring up ghosts, chiefly the ghost or vision of James, coarse-mouthed, cruel, vindictive. The bare idea of the case being reopened made her shudder, she had been so tormented in court, her modesties outraged. She knew she could never, would never bear it again. If the dreadful choice were all that was left to her she would give up Gabriel. At the thought of giving up Gabriel it seemed there was nothing else for which she cared, nothing on earth.

She conjured up not only ghosts but absurdities. The shabby peering man would go to Hampstead, question Gabriel's silly sister, be shown letters. This was more than she could bear. On the last occasion letters of hers had been read in court; love letters to James! She cringed in her bed at the remembrance of them. And what had she written to Gabriel? Not one word came back to her of anything she had written. At first she knew they had been laboured letters, laboured or literary. But since she had been down here, and Peter Kennedy, by sheer force of contrast, had taught her how much she could care for a really good and clever man, she had written with entire unrestraint, freely.

She wrote that telegram to Gabriel Stanton at four o'clock in the morning, going down to the